Morning Next to the Stargate
by Rosepixie
Summary: A series of very short stories about characters from Stargate SG-1 in the morning. There is very little plot, but it is safe to assume that the stories all take place on the same morning, so small connections may become evident. I have no current plans to expand any of these, but may continue to add more of them over time.
1. Jack

Man, the beds on base were terrible! More comfortable than a bedroll on the ground in the wilderness somewhere, but still nowhere near the soft bed waiting for him at his house. Probably not even as comfortable as the lumpy, grass-filled excuses for beds the natives three planets ago had offered them.

SG-1 had gotten back from an off-world mission only a few hours ago and they were stuck on base until Janet finished going over their bloodwork. Since it was the early hours of the morning, they had all been ordered to get some sleep.

 _Dammit_ , thought Jack, flipping over to face the opposite wall. _If there hadn't been bugs, I could be home right now. Leave it to alien mosquitoes to keep me stuck here on this pile of bricks._

The planet they had just returned from had been beautiful, but hot as the Amazon jungle and twice as infested with little biting mosquito-like insects. The trip had mostly been dull beyond that. The civilization that had once lived there was long gone, leaving only a few rapidly decaying ruins for Daniel to obsess over while the rest of them were eaten alive by potentially disease carrying pests.

He smiled as he remembered the one good part of the trip. The part that would never make it into any reports. They had spent three days on the planet verifying that it was uninhabited and allowing Daniel and Sam to collect data. At the end of the second day, Sam had gotten fed up with the itchy bug bites and had decided to take a dip in the river to sooth her skin. She had been gone longer than he had expected, so Jack had gone to check on her. He had reached the treeline just as she was stepping out of the river, emerging from the water like a nymph or mermaid, dripping wet in her clinging t-shirt and as beautiful as any goddess he could ever dream up. Miraculously, she hadn't seen him standing there gaping at her.

Jack gritted his teeth at the memory, one he never planned to forget, and again wished that he was at home. Or really anywhere actually private. Flipping onto his back and running his hands through his hair, he decided to give up on sleep. Maybe breakfast was ready in the commissary. If not, there was always Jello in the refrigerator and that would do.

As he made his way down the hallway, he hoped fervently that Sam was asleep in her room so he could refrain from burying that memory for a little while longer.


	2. Janet

The timer went off on the machine across the room and Janet jolted awake, almost falling off the stretcher she had chosen to nap on in the process. She scrambled up and lurched across the room, half awake, to the table with the beeping device and a computer.

Once the alarm was off, she stopped for a moment, steadying herself on the edge of the table, and focused on waking up fully. The hour and a half long nap had helped, but it wasn't as good as a real night's sleep by a long shot.

Deciding that she was as awake as she was going to get at the moment, Janet turned to the computer beside the formerly beeping machine and typed in her access code. The tests she was running weren't going to give her a complete picture of how the insects from their latest gate trip had affected SG-1, but she was hoping that it would rule a few things out and maybe help her better determine the next steps.

Like mosquitoes, the insects hadn't bitten the team consistently. Teal'c had come back with the fewest bites, only eleven, while Sam had in excess of forty distinct bites. All of them had more irritation at the sites of the bites than was typical of comparable bug bites on earth from non-venomous insects, but Daniel's reaction was by far the worst - bright red bite sites swollen to the size of a quarter or larger and hot to the touch. It was a particularly severe dermatologic allergic reaction, but she had not been able to identify a reason for the reaction yet. There didn't seem to be any histamine-antagonizing compounds in the bites, yet they were reacting as if there was. None of them showed any signs of anything leading to anaphylactic shock, though, which was good.

A few of the bugs themselves were being analyzed in another lab down the hall by an insect specialist, but Janet was hoping that the blood she had collected from each member of the team would help her to rule out the possibility that the bugs had carried any diseases and perhaps better identify the source of the unusual irritation.

The computer screen began filling with preliminary data from tests on the blood. Janet sat down and started to try and make sense of it all. It was nice that the computer could directly display the data from the machine, but unfortunately it was not sophisticated enough to interpret the data. And spreadsheets of data were not Janet's favorite part of being a doctor.

She had kept the team on base while the bugs and blood were being tested and she wanted to make sure and rule out any problems as quickly and completely as possible so that they could go home. Jack in particular got unbearable if stuck on base too long.

The smell of coffee drifted through the hallways of the underground base, reminding Janet of how long it had been since she had eaten or had anything to drink. After only a moment of consideration, she marked the place she was at in the data and headed over to the door of her lab. Poking her head out into the hallway, she saw an airman walking by. He stopped as soon as she waved to him.

"Major!" she said politely, but firmly (her no-nonsense Air Force Doctor voice). "I'm running tests in here and can't leave at the moment. Could you bring me a cup of coffee and a muffin from the commissary?"

"Yes, ma'am," the major responded crisply before turning on his heel and heading for the commissary.

Janet smiled and returned to her computer to continue pouring over the preliminary blood test results and making notes. She would figure this out. They had faced much worse than a bunch of tiny non-venomous insects. She hoped.


End file.
